Major League Longing: What Comes After Game 7

Glenn Stout has served as the editor of the Best American Sports Writing series since 1991. His latest book is Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway's Remarkable First Year.

Baseball is over again and — for a while — so am I.

As long as I can remember, this game has been my companion. The maple trees in the backyard where I grew up were known only as first base, second and third. The clothesline was an imaginary Green Monster. I fell asleep each night to the static of a distant game on an old radio and dreamed of the roaring crowd. Even now, when I think of "home" I don't think of a house. I think of the bare spot I wore in the grass while batting, the place I ran back to after every imaginary home run.

Now another season has ended. As the sounds that only baseball makes disappear, there is a stillness left behind that feels like nothing else, and I know again I am alone.

The days that used to start with stats and coffee turning cold as I perused the blogs and box scores are done. The morning doesn't mean it's time to "check the West Coast scores." It means "get up and go to work." The news is not for highlights and home runs, but wars and famines and politics.

The walks I took with the dog so I could throw the ball and pretend I was cutting down the lead runner at third become simple games of fetch. The phone calls with friends that started with "Can you believe that hit?" and "What was he thinking?" end quickly or aren't made at all. I turn my car radio from AM back to FM. My wife and daughter control the television remote, and I catch up on my reading. And instead of lying awake at night and wondering how in the world he could miss that pitch, I slip into a fast slumber.

It's over, but we've been through this before, baseball and I, and I'm sure I'll survive the winter soon to come. I know, even as the whoops and hollers of baseball's newest world champion fade, that somewhere in the silence that follows, another season will start to make its sound.

There will be trades, Tommy John surgeries and free agent signings for too much money. Even though there will be snow upon the ground, there will also be talk about pitchers and catchers reporting, aging veterans and rookie phenoms.

Something deep inside me will start to stir, and then I'll hear it again; a voice on a playground, a bat meeting a ball, a cheer and a slap on the back. At first it will be faint and far off, but as the days get longer, the sounds of baseball will be back beside me. Soon enough, we will both be ready for another season.

Baseball does not have to begin and end with the major league championship season, Glenn. There's so much more to it than that! For those of us who chase the dream from north to south and east to west twelve months out of the year, the endless summer beckons eternally. Be of good cheer: baseball has not abandoned you, it's just hibernating.

Well, there is the Arizona Fall League, baseball in Mexico, the Puerto Rico, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. They do play some of the games on ESPN Deportes too. And there is always youth baseball tournaments to watch. I feel fortunate to live in the Desert SouthWest near Las Vegas where the weather is milder in the winter and can practice outside during the "off season".

But ultimately I agree with Rogers Hornsby "People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring."

A great essay that captures the emptiness lying in the belly when the season ends. But those pangs make the eventual arrival of spring all the sweeter. I do admit, however, to envy of those who live in those parts of the US where baseball can be played year round.

Four months after the last comment was posted about Glenn Stout's article, I'm delighted to inform checkswing.com members that the author was just awarded baseball research's most prestigious honor, the Seymour Medal, by the Society For American Baseball Research (SABR) in conjunction with The Nine, a smaller but similarly dedicated group of researchers and writers. Here's a link to the SABR website article recounting the festivities at the Fiesta Resort Conference Center in Tempe, Arizona week before last where Glenn's book Fenway 1912 was recognized as the best of the best: http://bit.ly/zKLiBI.

Congratulations to Glenn Stout, and to checkswing.com for recognizing great writing and sharing it with all of us.

They went and did it They added another wild card playoff . my fears have been realized. Now if they would just get rid of the DH. .To me that's why the ball games last 4 and 5 hours. That and advertising, especially on FOX.